Instead the federal Liberal leader has stumped with Wynne, most recently in Niagara Falls. Is this altruism on his part? Or folly? Or both?

Consider that Wynne leads a government more than 10 years old. Even if it weren’t for the billion-dollar gas-plant scandal, or the air ambulance debacle, or eHealth, or the disgraceful, bloated disaster that is the Green Energy Act, or Caledonia, or … you get the picture. Even if it weren’t for all that, Wynne would face an uphill fight, both in the byelections to be held Feb. 13 in Niagara and Thornhill, and in the general election expected to follow sometime this year. The recycling of governing political parties roughly once every decade has long been the rule in Canadian politics.

But it goes deeper. Trudeau has made no secret of the fact that he intends to run right-of-centre on economics. He signaled as much with his endorsement last year of Chinese state-owned CNOOC’s takeover of Calgary-based Nexen Inc. He supports the Keystone XL pipeline — another nod to commerce. He has said he considers himself a “classical liberal” and cites Wilfrid Laurier as his favourite prime minister. Laurier is as close to libertarian as Canadian prime ministers get. Chrystia Freeland, Trudeau’s star economic adviser, has described herself as “a capitalist, red in tooth and claw.”

We can assume from the foregoing that Trudeau’s economic platform, when it emerges, will be pro-trade, pro-balanced budgets and pro-individual liberty — with a middle-class education twist, perhaps, but not radically different from the status quo. The contrast between Liberals and Conservatives in 2015 will be tonal, personal and focused on the one area where the party leaders have quite different approaches — accountability and the democratic deficit.

This raises two more red flags in our Wynne-Trudeau compatibility calculator. Wynne, following raptly in the Dalton McGuinty tradition, has never met a problem too complex to be swaddled in a suffocating goo of earnest speechifying, or de-escalated with a government handout. Her response to the ice storm over Christmas — gift cards for all, no questions asked, because it was best to “do something,” was perfectly McGuintyesque.

Even more problematically, Wynne’s government itself, the very fact that it remains in power, stands in mute contradiction to Trudeau’s stated commitment to democratic reform and accountability. The fact remains that McGuinty’s government should have faced a non-confidence vote in the fall of 2012, and would have fallen, had he not prorogued the Legislature just before he quit. That manoeuvre was shameful. It delegitimizes every Ontario Liberal act that came after, including Wynne’s entire premiership.

Finally, there’s this. Despite the aforementioned feel-goodery, and numerous symbolic efforts on Wynne’s part to “change the channel” or “turn the page” or “listen carefully to what people are saying,” the Ontario government continues to blunder obliviously ahead with the very policies that cost it its majority in the last election, despite the billion-dollar gas-plant fraud, and obliterated its hopes in rural and small-town Ontario for the foreseeable future. The Green Energy Act remains in place. Industrial wind turbines are still being erected where they aren’t wanted — despite years-long, passionate opposition from people unhappy about living in their shadow.

Weighing against all that is a single, pragmatic argument for federal-provincial co-operation. At a fundraising and volunteer level, these are essentially the same party. The same individuals work for both branches. Trudeau’s giving Wynne the cold shoulder would get up some partisans’ noses and might cause rifts of the kind that nearly destroyed the party a decade ago. It’s easier to justify an occasional Trudeau campaign appearance with Wynne, as one Liberal put it to me, than to explain a pointed non-appearance. Moreover, working for Wynne at the riding level, especially in areas where she has no chance of victory but the federal Liberals do, puts an advance team on the ground and gets them seasoned. It’s more evidence, in other words, that Trudeau is above all a ground-game politician.

To which we can reply, sure; politics being what it is, pragmatism is always a consideration. But the Grits, federal and provincial both, might consider this: Without major gains across Ontario, Trudeau has no hope of winning government in 2015. And Wynne has little or no hope of winning a single rural seat, in this or any other year. Does the premier really want to risk hobbling the best shot her party has had federally since Jean Chretien stepped aside?

Loyalty requires that Trudeau give Wynne a helping hand, should she ask. Loyalty also requires, perhaps, that she not ask.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/liberal-brand-clash-looms-in-key-ontario-battleground/feed00.000000 0.0000000.0000000.000000Strange bedfellowsmikedentandtOntario Premier Kathleen Wynne Canada’s trade agreement with Europe is fine but the bonanza that awaits in Asia is far largerhttp://o.canada.com/news/canadas-trade-agreement-with-europe-is-fine-but-the-bonanza-that-awaits-in-asia-is-far-larger
http://o.canada.com/news/canadas-trade-agreement-with-europe-is-fine-but-the-bonanza-that-awaits-in-asia-is-far-larger#commentsMon, 21 Oct 2013 14:45:11 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=332239]]>MANILA, Philippines — Cheerleading for Canada’s nascent multilateral trade deal with the 28 countries and 500 million citizens of the European Union must be tempered by the fact that the Old World’s economic future is grim while the market in the Pacific region is 10 times larger and the economies here are growing exponentially.

As Der Spiegel, the German weekly, bluntly reasoned in an essay last week, if Europe “persist(s) in its current lethargy” it risks becoming no more than “a cultural amusement park that will be visited and admired by the winners of globalization as something of a well-preserved museum.”

To be one of those global winners and not become part of a Trans-Atlantic museum, Canada must obviously do what business it can with a fading Europe. But nostalgia for comfortable trading patterns of a bygone era must not prevent Ottawa from establishing a new global identity by maintaining a laser focus on the Pacific region. Even impoverished economic backwaters such as the Philippines have been posting phenomenal growth rates of seven per cent and more that mock the negative growth rates of some European countries.

Next up for Canada’s trade negotiators is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The Harper government was shockingly late getting to the TPP table, only joining these talks last year. But the negotiations to reduce trade barriers and establish fairer trade rules, which involve 12 nations in Asia and the Americas, although not China, are suddenly in the home stretch. Whenever the TPP is concluded, either a meeting of trade ministers in Singapore beginning Dec. 7 or, more likely, sometime early in the New Year, it will be a sweeter victory for Canada than CETA.

The $15.1 billion Chinese deal for Calgary-based Nexen Inc. and the $5 billion Malaysian takeover of Calgary-based Progress Energy Corp. — which will apparently come with an additional $30 billion investment in infrastructure — has already gone some way toward establishing Canada’s Pacific identity. But there is so much more aside from selling low hanging fruit such oil and natural gas from Alberta and British Columbia that Canada must do if it is to prove its commitment to Asia and nab a greater share of the action. If not, it could be pushed aside by countries not endowed with such phenomenal natural resources, but which have a comprehensive plan to capitalize on their agriculture and burgeoning high-tech fields such as communications and cyber security.

China might not be too impressed but most other Asian nations would welcome Canada doing a modest military pivot, transferring a couple of warships and surveillance aircraft to Vancouver Island from the east coast, where they are relics of Canada’s ever more distant connection to the NATO alliance. Such shifts would dovetail with Canada becoming more involved in American and Australian plans to strengthen military ties with their Asian allies.

Canada must also do far better to get its Asian skill sets right. There have been great strides recently to encourage Asian students to study in Canada rather than in the U.S., Australia and Britain. But much more must be done or Canada will be left behind.

At the same time, Ottawa and the provinces must push much harder to get Canadian kids to learn Asian languages. Language departments and university faculties that remain largely euro-centric should be overhauled and classes in language and culture should be heavily promoted in primary and secondary schools. Moreover, far more Canadian students should be offered serious incentives to study in Asia.

The trade agreement that Canada has made with the EU represents what is likely to be the last substantive negotiation on anything involving these two old partners. To avoid the “Europe-is-becoming-a-museum scenario,” Canada has to get Asia right, while not neglecting new opportunities in Latin America and Africa. To create a Pacific identity Canada has to be much bolder and much more creative.

Internal memos obtained by Greenpeace under the Access to Information Act show the rail carrier raised the proposal last March with Natural Resources Canada.

“Nexen Inc. is reportedly working with CN to examine the transportation of crude oil on CN’s railway to Prince Rupert, B.C., to be loaded onto tankers for export to Asia,” states a departmental briefing note setting up the March 1 meeting.

An attached CN presentation paper notes that “CN has ample capacity to run seven trains per day to match Gateway’s proposed capacity.”

CN is denying it has made a specific proposal for Prince Rupert but says it will consider any such project as it comes up.

Greenpeace provided the documents to The Canadian Press.

The proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, which would carry crude oil to Kitimat, B.C., has met fierce opposition from First Nations and environmentalists.

Greenpeace researcher Keith Stewart said the CN rail pitch has the appearance of a “Plan B” in case Northern Gateway is blocked, but that it raises “the same or greater risks.”

The horrific Lac-Megantic, Que., disaster in July, which claimed 47 lives when a train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded, has focused intense scrutiny on the burgeoning oil-by-rail industry.

Some 5.5 million litres of oil either burned or leaked into the environment in Lac-Megantic. The fire burned for four days.

A spokesman for CN Rail told The Canadian Press in an email that “no specific crude-by-rail project to Prince Rupert (was) discussed” at the March meeting with Natural Resources Canada.

The company “does not disclose publicly its commercial discussions with customers,” Mark Hallman said in the email.

“CN will continue to explore new opportunities to move crude oil safely and efficiently to markets,” Hallman wrote.

“The company will consider concrete crude-by-rail proposals, including any specific project to move crude to Prince Rupert. However, there is no infrastructure in place at Prince Rupert to transfer crude oil from train tank cars to vessels.”

Hallman also noted it was the government that asked CN for the meeting, not the other way around.

Indeed, the documents obtained by Greenpeace show Ottawa was intensely interested in oil by rail, at least prior to the Quebec accident.

“NRCan is currently meeting with Transport Canada to mutually understand how rail could be part of a solution to current market access challenges,” says an undated memorandum for Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver.

The memo describes rail as “an increasingly viable option” and states that carriers Canadian Pacific and CN “have indicated that the potential to increase rail movements of crude oil is theoretically unlimited.”

Rail officials had indicated that a project to bring crude to port for tanker export “is likely in future.”

A separate memo for International Trade Minister Ed Fast and Dennis Lebel, then the transport minister, assets that Transport Canada “has identified no major safety concerns with the increased oil on rail capacity in Canada, nor with the safety of tank cars …”

The memo states that “transportation of oil by rail does not trigger the need for a federal environmental assessment” but notes that “proposals to construct new infrastructure to support the activity” may require an assessment under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

The “Departmental Position” on oil by rail is entirely blacked out from the memo.

“If the government or industry imagines they can use these regulatory loopholes to do an end-run around opposition to tar sands moving through those lands or waters, they will be in for a rude awakening,” said Stewart.

Opposition in Canada to the Northern Gateway and in the United States to TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline has keyed on stopping or slowing development of Alberta’s oilsands development.

In an interview with Postmedia News Friday, the NDP leader maintained his “adversary in the next election is Stephen Harper. Period.” While he doesn’t deny the Liberal leader has hogged headlines with his plan to legalize marijuana, is soaring in public opinion polls and already has pundits musing about a Liberal victory in 2015, Mulcair’s not afraid the Grit leader will take a bite out of his party’s seemingly sinking support.

“If the next election were two weeks or two months away, my reaction might be slightly different,” said Mulcair ahead of next week’s caucus session in Saskatoon where MPs will gather to plot strategy for the fall.

“The next election is two years away and we know exactly what we have to do and we’re very confident about our ability to promise Canadians good, competent public administration.”

While he’s largely disregarded the third-party, Mulcair now acknowledges a “two-front war” is brewing ahead of the next campaign with the Conservatives, his “principal adversary” and the Liberals, his “subsidiary adversary.”

In other words, he said, “of course we’re not going to ignore the Liberals.”

Mulcair proceeded to question Trudeau’s “character” and “ability to lead” given his recent admission to smoking pot just a year before he supported mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana production in the House of Commons. By contrast, he said, the NDP supports decriminalization and a recent proposal by police chiefs to fine people for minor pot possession rather than saddle them with a criminal record.

He also slammed the Liberal leader for supporting the takeover of Calgary oil company Nexen by China’s state-owned CNOOC, as well as the Keystone XL pipeline to the United States instead of a west-east pipeline the NDP argues will create jobs in Canada, contribute more in royalties to the provinces and help Canada’s energy security.

“Mr. Trudeau wants to go South to the United States. That’s 40,000 jobs for the U.S. and doesn’t help Canada. He’s going to have to explain that,” Mulcair said. “We think Canada should maintain control of its natural resources and we think they should be developed sustainably and in the better interest of Canada.”

Where Trudeau has promised to unveil his vision for the economy in two years time, Mulcair said the NDP hasn’t waited until “10 days before the election campaign” to propose “concrete policy” and has already laid out plans to push back the age of retirement, tackle soaring credit card rates, pull seniors out of poverty and properly fund First Nations education.

The key difference between the NDP and Liberals — a party that has increasingly tried to out NDP the NDP in terms of social policy — is that the official Opposition will deliver on its promises, Mulcair assured.

Noting the Liberals were the ones to roll back on a promise to eliminate the GST under former leader Jean Chretien and sign the Kyoto accord as an exercise in public relations rather than a true commitment to reduce greenhouse gases as his top adviser later admitted, Mulcair said Canadians could expect more from his party.

“Our track record is one of putting ideas on the table, saying what we’re going to do and then doing something quite unusual in Canadian politics, we go ahead and do exactly what we promised,” he said.

“The Liberal track record: you promise whatever you think people want to hear and you do the opposite once you’re elected.”

As far as the fall session goes, Mulcair said he will continue to hold Harper to account for the Senate spending scandal. He calls it “implausible” that the ever-controlling prime minister didn’t know about a $90,000 cheque given to embattled senator Mike Duffy by his own former chief of staff Nigel Wright to pay off expenses that were unfairly charged to taxpayers. The Opposition leader won kudos for his rapid-fire grilling of Conservatives during question period in the spring and he looks forward to “completing the work” when Parliament resumes.

The NDP will also call on Parliament to probe the impact of deregulation by both Conservatives and previous Liberal governments on public safety and will ask the appropriate Commons committees to study everything from rail and food inspection to cuts to maritime search and rescue.

Before New Democrats reconvene after a busy summer fundraising, recruiting new members and bolstering support on specific issues in ridings not currently held by the party — a task several critics took on during the break — Mulcair said he will stop in Regina to meet with Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall. A war of words erupted between the pair earlier this year over negative comments the NDP leader made about the Keystone XL pipeline, but the two have become unlikely allies when it comes to support for Senate abolition.

Mulcair said he expects their earlier differences will be “water under the bridge” as they discuss the future of the Senate. Also on the agenda is the economy, health care and the federal skills training program.

His meeting with the premier is among numerous similar meetings he’s had with provincial leaders across the country over the summer. Unlike Harper who has avoided sitting down with his provincial counterparts, Mulcair has promised to hold formal meetings with them twice a year if elected prime minister.

“I’m not shy to say we’re going to be far more open to working with the provinces and territories,” he said.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/tom-mulcair-dismisses-liberal-honeymoon-but-wont-totally-ignore-justin-trudeau/feed4Tom MulcairtobicohenTom MulcairHarper staffer gets into scuffle with Chinese journalisthttp://o.canada.com/news/national/harper-staffer-gets-into-scuffle-with-chinese-journalist
http://o.canada.com/news/national/harper-staffer-gets-into-scuffle-with-chinese-journalist#commentsFri, 23 Aug 2013 21:54:30 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=299900]]>RAGLAN MINE, Que. — The final public event on Stephen Harper’s annual summer tour was very nearly derailed Friday after a journalist from China’s state-owned newspaper got into a shoving match with a female staffer from the Prime Minister’s Office and was pulled away by members of Harper’s security detail.

The incident occurred during a question-and-answer session with the media, after the formal portion of the announcement at Raglan Mine, in Quebec’s far northwest, had ended. As the prime minister was taking a question from the CBC’s James Cudmore, People’s Daily Canada bureau chief Li Xue Jiang began insisting to PMO staffer Julie Vaux that he was next in line to ask a question.

Moments later Li was being hustled by three Mounties to the back of the room, a large steel warehouse. Eyewitnesses saw Li shove PMO staffer Julie Vaux twice during the altercation. In an interview later, he claimed she had shoved him first. But he acknowledged pushing her. “I was in the line. She corrected me several times, so I pushed her,” Li said.

“We’ll be raising the matter with the Press Gallery, and Mr. Li should apologize immediately,” the PMO’s communications director, Andrew MacDougall, tweeted later. “Agree or disagree with how things are run, there was no excuse for Mr. Li to get physical with our staff.”

Asked whether he would apologize, Li said: “They should apologize to me, for being not fair. For depriving my right to ask questions.”

Harper was visiting Raglan to trumpet a $750,000 federal investment in wind power generation for the remote nickel mining site. Li had wanted to ask Harper to clarify Canada’s foreign investment regulations, he said, in light of China’s state-owned CNOOC’s takeover of Calgary-based Nexen last winter.

Earlier, it had been agreed among the pool of reporters travelling with Harper — among them journalists from CBC, Radio-Canada, the Toronto Star, CTV, The Canadian Press, Global, Sun Media and Postmedia — that Li would ask one of five questions allowed by the PM in Friday’s media availability.

It is Harper’s practice to limit the number of questions he takes from reporters — typically on this trip, four from the national media, one from any local media present, and one from Radio-Canada. Because of the limit on questions, reporters typically pool their efforts, and also determine by consensus who will pose them, and in what order. Questions are not shown to PMO staff in advance.

However, when the reporters’ list of questioners went back to the PMO, word came back that Harper had declined to take a question from Li. Throughout this six-day swing through the far North — Harper’s eighth as prime minister — Li and another Chinese-language journalist, Xinhua news bureau chief Dacheng Zhang, have complained they were being unfairly kept away from tour events made accessible to Canadian journalists.

Li was unhappy on Wednesday that he was not among those boated out by Zodiac to the deck of the Coast Guard icebreaker Sir Wilfred Laurier, in the harbour of Gjoa Haven on King William Island, to hear a briefing by the prime minister and others about ongoing efforts to locate the remains of the lost Franklin expedition. PMO staff said the spots on the Zodiacs were limited and a majority of reporters agreed with the decision to restrict access to Canadian media for that event.

Both Chinese journalists have made a habit during the trip of photographing and interviewing their colleagues, as well as taking numerous photos of the interior of the Royal Canadian Air Force‘s C-130J aircraft. Such images are public and not subject to any security restrictions. Asked whether he relays any information or photographs he gathers in the course of his work in Canada to the Chinese government, Li said he does not. “No, just my paper,” he said.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/harper-staffer-gets-into-scuffle-with-chinese-journalist/feed2Chinese journalist scuffle with Harper staffermikedentandtParliament’s looming energy debate has high stakes for Harper, Mulcair, Trudeau and co.http://o.canada.com/news/national/1328-col-dentandt
http://o.canada.com/news/national/1328-col-dentandt#commentsSun, 27 Jan 2013 19:30:29 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=189004]]>This will be the sitting of Parliament during which resource and energy politics come to utterly dominate the national conversation. Barring war or natural disaster, this will hold true from now through the next federal election in 2015.

Here’s why.

For the federal Liberals, the return of the House of Commons on Jan. 28 marks both a move into a pre-leadership hiatus, during which the party’s MPs and critics will hesitate to break any new policy ground for fear of stepping on the next boss’s toes (a new leader is to be chosen at a convention in Ottawa in April), and a significant ratcheting up of the leadership contest itself.

This isn’t to say interim leader Bob Rae will sit on his hands: If history is any guide, he’ll deliver aggressive, voluble performances in question period and in scrums, perhaps even bolstered by the knowledge that he no longer has anything to lose. Rae will also be front and centre on the aboriginal file, in which he has a strong personal interest. But the lion’s share of the Liberal party’s energies and attention will be directed internally this spring. Enter resource politics.

Justin Trudeau, the putative front-runner, clearly understands he has one shot at resurrecting his party as a freestanding political force, after which calls for a merger (in effect, a dissolution) with the New Democrats will grow too loud to ignore. He doesn’t need to win to keep the party alive: He does need to put it back within hailing distance of power – ballpark, 70 seats.

In order to achieve that, Trudeau must significantly bite into the New Democrats’ stronghold in Quebec – say, between 25 and 30 seats – while taking all of the Maritimes, as well as pockets of British Columbia. And he must make significant inroads in small-c-conservative Ontario, which has moved in stages into the Conservative fold over the past three elections (2006, 2008, 2011). Ontario is the key: Liberals can’t win there without appealing to Harper voters in the 519, 905 and 705 areas – Toronto’s suburban hinterland, the populous southwest, and the north.

How to do so? In speeches and newspaper articles, Trudeau has zeroed in repeatedly on resource economics – whether by disavowing his father’s reviled National Energy Program in Calgary, or by backing a Chinese state-owned corporate takeover of oil and gas producer Nexen Inc. The point is to present himself as pro-free-enterprise, and thus a viable alternative, for conservative Ontarians, to Stephen Harper. Trudeau seeks to marry this “libertarian” economic inflection with youth, social progressivism and his perfect Quebecer’s French, to create a new Liberal coalition. Resource extraction and the symbolism associated with it are key to the strategy.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, for his part, comes to the discussion with a different but no less pressing set of problems. His strategy, since becoming leader of the New Democrats last year, has been to present himself as a scrapper and his MPs as “responsible public administrators,” thus belying the party’s old reputation as a nest of managerially inept do-gooders. Mulcair’s branding attempts to marry environmentalism with “sound fiscal management,” and more than a whiff of resentment, in the southwestern Ontario rust belt, at Albertans’ resource wealth. Hence, “Dutch disease.” But that gambit has an important flaw, which has become increasingly obvious in the past year: It presupposes Ontarians don’t understand the extent to which Western resource wealth benefits all Canadians. They do.

So in this sitting, as Mulcair begins his two-year pre-campaign, he will flesh out his thinking on how Western bitumen and other resource wealth can be profitably extracted from the ground and shipped to market, without unduly harming the environment, taking care to express this in a way that does not set Albertans’ – and by extension, Ontarians’ – teeth on edge. Mulcair failed in this last year, and he does not like to fail. So, he will come back to it – sooner, rather than later.

Finally, we have Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservatives – intensely focused on resource and energy development at the best of times, but even more so now, with the Idle No More movement and some aboriginal chiefs threatening to block $650 billion in planned developments across the country.

These Conservatives view every file, including those traditionally related to social justice, through an economic prism – the thinking being that the surest remedy to poverty and related social problems is a job. I am told the prime minister’s overarching goal is to address the blight of aboriginal poverty and the growing labour shortage in the resource economy at one stroke – by easing aboriginal Canadians’ access to resource-related skilled trades. It’s not just about revenue sharing, in other words: It’s about building new industry and the workforce to staff it. Agree or disagree with his approach, Harper is nothing if not consistent.

In short, this winter, it’s all about the economy, only more so: It’s about mining, oil and gas. The debates will be fierce. They begin, effectively, now.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/1328-col-dentandt/feed0NmikedentandtAlberta energy companies shine in sustainability rankinghttp://o.canada.com/business/markets/alberta-energy-companies-shine-in-sustainability-ranking
http://o.canada.com/business/markets/alberta-energy-companies-shine-in-sustainability-ranking#commentsWed, 23 Jan 2013 07:01:58 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=186669]]>OTTAWA – Some prominent Alberta energy companies are among 10 major Canadian businesses that were selected in a new ranking of the planet’s 100 most sustainable publicly-traded corporations by business publication, Corporate Knights.

The annual list, released Wednesday in Switzerland by the Toronto-based media and investment research company, includes several oil and gas corporations that operate in Canada, including Nexen (71st place), Suncor (81st place), and Cenovus (88th place), as well as foreign-based energy companies with Canadian interests such as Statoil and Royal Dutch Shell.

“There’s been a broad commitment to responsible development of oil and gas here at Nexen that goes back a decade or more,” said Jeff Flood, general manager of social responsibility at Nexen, which made the list for a fourth year.

“It’s easy for any company to make public claims about their commitment to sustainability… The average person can take this as an independent and third-party (assessment) beyond the window-dressing of sustainability.”

Teck Resources Ltd, a Vancouver-based company with interests in mining and materials, is the top Canadian company on the list in 21st position.

“This ranking recognizes the progress we’ve made, but we know there is more work to be done,” said spokesman Chris Stannell, in an email.

Umicore SA – a Belgium-based materials company – was on top of the list overall, followed by Brazil-based Natura Cosmeticos – a consumer staples company – and Statoil – the Norwegian-based oil and gas company that has Canadian interests in the oilsands.

Other Canadian companies on the list included Barrick Gold Corporation (40th place), the Canadian National Railway Company (57th place), Telus Corp (60th place), Sun Life Financial (85th place), the Royal Bank of Canada (87th place), as well as pipeline company Enbridge (79th place), which was slapped by millions of dollars in fines by North American regulators over the past two years because of an oil spill in Michigan and a gas explosion near Toronto.

Toby Heaps, the CEO of Corporate Knights, said the survey evaluated whether the publicly-traded companies are doing a good job at charting a path toward sustainability, but should not be used to indicate that the listed companies have succeeded in achieving a sustainable path.

“I wouldn’t want to pretend that there’s no possibility that this ranking can’t be used for greenwashing purposes in some respect,” Heaps said in an interview.

But he said companies are engaging with him on the survey to provide more information and respond to issues from the ranking.

He also noted that two-thirds of the companies on the list this year were on track to double their productivity in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, water, and waste by 2025.

National science academies from the largest countries in the world have all agreed that humans must dramatically scale back land-use changes, deforestation and consumption of fossil fuels such as oil and gas, to slow down heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions from warming the atmosphere and causing irreversible damage to the planet’s ecosystems.

In the case of Enbridge, Heaps said recent fines were taken into account, but that the pipeline company was measured against performance of other businesses in the same category.

Enbridge was not immediately able to return messages from Postmedia News seeking comment.

Corporate Knights said it compiled the list using data from Bloomberg followed by more detailed communication and exchanges with the 350 companies on a short-list that were selected based on a number of factors including their size and market share.

]]>http://o.canada.com/business/markets/alberta-energy-companies-shine-in-sustainability-ranking/feed0NexenmikejdesouzaCan Canada’s Conservatives learn from their mistakes?http://o.canada.com/news/national/1224-col-dentandt
http://o.canada.com/news/national/1224-col-dentandt#commentsSun, 23 Dec 2012 14:15:12 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=173113]]>Stephen Harper, like Margaret Thatcher before him, is not for turning.

Indeed, the Prime Minister seems to take quiet delight in quashing the bouts of cabinet-shuffle speculation that periodically arise in Ottawa. He did so last summer, when a major shuffle was widely expected within his own ranks. He did so again last week, telling TVA in a year-end interview that he plans no cabinet-level changes now, preferring instead to focus on the 2013 budget. Delaying until summer would be in character for Harper, and also has an internal logic: By then he’ll be building the team he’ll take into the next election in 2015.

Yet it is clear, and has been for weeks, that this government urgently needs a refresh. The evidence has been building since September. It reached a crescendo two weeks ago with the Conservatives’ messy scrapping of their plan to sole-source a purchase of 65 F-35 Lightning fighter-bombers for the Royal Canadian Air Force. That came on the heels of the Nexen decision, by which the government green-lighted the takeover of Calgary-based Nexen Inc. by China state-owned CNOOC, for $15.1-billion, but “slammed the door” on similar deals in future. The Tories appear to believe their Nexen compromise was, politically at least, a win: That remains to be seen.

The hardest knock of all against the Tories, however, and the one that cuts deepest, is simply that they’ve forgotten how to listen. Their opponents will say they never knew how to begin with. That is untrue. If the Conservatives had a single secret weapon over the past seven years, beyond their extraordinary fundraising network, it was their ear. They had an unerring sense of what, when all is said and done, Canadians want.

In the past year, however, and especially since the spring, the Tories have stumbled from one deadfall trap to the next – with they themselves doing the digging. They consider their two omnibus bills in 2012 to be triumphs of efficient government: Doing the job Canadians elected them to do. From a Conservative standpoint, that is to re-structure every aspect of the economy, and the government’s relationship with it, in light of what is most efficient. Only this approach, the thinking goes, can prepare Canada for the challenges of the 21st Century.

It’s an argument worth making: The Conservatives’ problem, in a nutshell, is that they’ve stopped making it. Since last winter, when Harper made his famous speech in Davos, the government has fallen into a pattern of simply acting, rather than persuading or even communicating. There is no attempt to debate or discuss: The government announces its intentions and then moves ahead, come hell or high water. The opposition, even the government’s own MPs, are spectators. It’s as though Harper has determined his reforms will be controversial, no matter what: So get them done quickly, smashing all opposition aside. Then, in the final two years of the mandate, try to patch things up with the electorate.

If that is indeed the plan, how would he go about it?

Step one would be to put himself back in front of Canadians, making the case consistently in a way that does not cast him as someone who only cares about people to the extent they contribute to GDP. Harper has allowed himself, since his triumph of May 2, 2011, to fall into a pattern of speaking only about economics. The post-Nexen-decision press conference was the most time he’s spent with reporters in months. He needs to talk about other things, in a way that demonstrates he shares Canadians’ broader concerns. He needs to make himself more habitually accessible to the media.

Step two would be to upgrade the quality of the cabinet. There are the obvious problems – Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, long rumoured to be headed for a judgeship in Manitoba; Defence Minister Peter MacKay, who must at some point assume responsibility for the F-35 mess. There the uneven performers – Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan and Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz come to mind – who are overdue for a change.

More to the point, Harper has half a dozen or so bright, seasoned and youngish MPs still on his back benches – among them James Rajotte, Pierre Poilievre, Michelle Rempel, Kellie Leitch and Candice Bergen – who are clearly cabinet material. He has some mid-level ministers now – Rona Ambrose and Diane Finley come to mind – who have handled difficult files without self-destructing, who could be promoted.

The bottom line, though, is that even a summer shuffle won’t be enough, on its own. The Harper government needs a new approach – more accountable, more engaged, more flexible, and more honest. The hope, for Conservative supporters, has to be that the PM and his team learn from their mistakes, and adjust.

If they cannot or will not do that, then they – and all of Parliament, if not the country – have a long 24 months ahead.

Twitter.com/mdentandt

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/1224-col-dentandt/feed0thatchermikedentandtStephen Harper warns of fiscal ‘runaway train’ in U.S.http://o.canada.com/news/stephen-harper-warns-of-fiscal-runaway-train-in-u-s
http://o.canada.com/news/stephen-harper-warns-of-fiscal-runaway-train-in-u-s#commentsSat, 22 Dec 2012 00:00:08 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=172745]]>OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the fiscal debt in the United States has put that country on a “runaway train” that could lead to further economic damage unless American lawmakers finally get control of massive deficits.

Here in Canada, people need to get better control of their personal debt loads and prepare for the possibility that higher interest rates could sideswipe their lives, Harper warns.

Just as important, he says, is that Canadians find ways to start saving for retirement.

Harper made the comments in a year-end interview with Global News national anchor Dawna Friesen. The interview is to be aired on Sunday, but a transcript of the discussion was released Friday.

On international affairs, Harper said that people should take “great caution” when considering military intervention in the Syrian civil war because there are “enormous dangers” in such an action. As well, he said Canada is concerned about whether Syria will ultimately descend into “sectarian warfare and chaos” once the Assad regime ultimately falls.

On the economy, the prime minister said his priority remains managing the issue four years after the recession.

“We continue to be in an economic world that has considerable uncertainty.”

Harper predicted that U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders will find some “partial compromises” on the budgetary fiscal cliff issue to “avert catastrophe” on Jan 1.

“I think their bigger challenge is going to be after January. The U.S. fiscal situation, if you look at it, is a runaway train.

“You know, they’re running deficits of a trillion dollars plus and that cannot continue. And so over the medium term they’re going to have to have a plan to deal with that.”

Harper was just as blunt in speaking about the financial risks that some Canadians face in their own personal lives.

He said that some people believe they are living within their means and have — thanks to low interest rates — racked up mortgage debts associated with home purchases.

“Many households are well within a comfort level but some have been pushing the envelope and we obviously urge them to be cautious,” said Harper.

“Because eventually, interest rates will go up. You should be asking yourself, ‘If interest rates were a couple of points higher, can I really afford the debt load I’m taking on now?’ ”

Harper urged Canadians to think of the longer term and remember that there are a variety of ways they can save for retirement and get tax write-offs.

“What I’d say to all Canadians is balance your debt levels, balance your borrowing, and balance your ambitions in terms of house ownership with some savings as well.”

In the interview Harper spoke on a variety of issues. Among the highlights:

* On immigration

Harper said his government is making “profound changes” to the immigration system so it is in sync with Canada’s labour needs.

“We have traditionally just been a country that passively accepts applications. We are now trying to go out and shape those immigration applications.”

* On the temporary foreign worker program

He said it is merely a “band-aid solution” to fill “low-wage occupations” in places like Alberta.

“What we really need are Canadians trained for the jobs and we need an immigration system that’s going to bring people in permanently to take advantage of those opportunities.”

* On foreign investment

He said his government allowed the takeover of oil company Nexen by a Chinese state-owned enterprise because it “does not transform an economy.” But he stressed that it is not a trend that will continue.

“We are not going to transform our economy from a market economy into an economy controlled by foreign governments.”

* On the school shooting in Newtown

He was profoundly affected by the shooting as a father of two children.

“I guess like most religious people, I pray regularly and ask for strength and for wisdom.”

He said he is always careful not to send the message that he is imposing his theological views on the country.

But he added: “There are times like this when you know where we’re all reassured by the fact that there is you know a benevolent power ultimately looking over all of us.”

* On how he makes important decisions

Harper said he tries to be as well briefed as possible on a range of subjects.

“I encourage my cabinet ministers and my caucus to do the same thing so that we make more decisions right than we do wrong because inevitably we’re not going to get everything right. We’re not perfect. We can’t see the future.”

* On the NHL lockout

He described it as a “terrible tragedy” — particularly since the players and owners are involved in hockey because of their love of the game.

“It’s a shame to see relationships get so antagonistic and so broken down…. I just hope they’re able to work through it because I do fear that as this is going forward, it is doing real serious damage to the game at the top level.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/stephen-harper-warns-of-fiscal-runaway-train-in-u-s/feed0Stephen Harpermarkkennedy1Resource debate will dog Tom Mulcair in 2013http://o.canada.com/news/national/resource-debate-will-dog-tom-mulcair-in-2013
http://o.canada.com/news/national/resource-debate-will-dog-tom-mulcair-in-2013#commentsThu, 20 Dec 2012 20:32:04 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=172087]]>The close of 2012 leaves NDP leader Tom Mulcair with one great area of vulnerability, it seems to me, which he has yet to sort out: His continuing inability to frame a discussion of environmental sustainability in terms that do not set Albertans’ teeth on edge. That aside, all things considered, he had a good year.

The governing Conservatives had a difficult fall session, most fair-minded observers would agree. Compounding this was a growing list of anti-New Democrat gambits that fizzled, backfired or failed to resonate.

For instance: “Angry Tom” has been a favourite Tory theme for months. It grew out of the NDP leadership fight and is predicated on the notion that Mulcair, who acquired the nickname “The Grizzly” years ago in Quebec City, has a nasty temper and an instinct for kicking shins, kneecap or groin when pressed.

It came up again early this month when Peter Van Loan, the government house leader, crossed the floor of the House of Commons, angrily wagging his finger at the NDP benches. This ignited an expletive-laced exchange with Mulcair that some MPs, for a few moments at least, thought might come to blows. Aha! Angry Tom!

Except that habitually, in the House and in interviews, Mulcair has been cutting and ruthlessly sarcastic, rather than visibly angry. Last spring New Democrats understood they needed a hawk, not a dove, to stand against Stephen Harper. They have one, who has proven himself an intelligent combatant. Thus, the “Angry Tom” narrative has little traction.

Next is the great carbon-tax gambit: A stupefying, multi-player talking-point play. For months, the Conservatives have insisted the NDP intends to impose a “$21-billion carbon tax” on the country. This is, in fact, false. The NDP in 2011 proposed a cap-and-trade system, similar to the one proposed by the Conservatives themselves in 2008. Though the NDP plan would cost consumers, so will any effective plan to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions – including regulation, such as the Conservatives now propose. The hypocrisy of the Conservative position, on balance, caused them more difficulty than their barbs did Mulcair.

Next, trade: In October and November Mulcair and his party came out strongly against the takeover of Nexen by China’s state-owned oil company, CNOOC, and the Harper government’s new Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) with China. That should have been a slam-dunk for the Tories – the NDP being, of course, anti-trade zealots who spend their winters huddled in straw-bale houses, pawing through the Communist Manifesto by candlelight.

But Mulcair and his trade critic, Don Davies, posed dispassionate, detailed questions, more often than not castigating the lack of engagement. Why hasn’t there been a national debate, beginning in Parliament, about the implications of accelerated trade with China? Polls showed most Canadians opposed the $15.1-billion Nexen takeover. It remains to be seen whether the government’s solution – allowing this one China state-owned takeover but purporting to slam the door on future ones – has merely created expectations on all sides that can’t be met. Again Mulcair emerges with, at worst, a draw, it seems to me.

Which brings us full circle to Dutch Disease: his thesis that eastern manufacturing exports have been unfairly harmed by the high currency values that accrue from surging Alberta oil and gas exports. Mulcair has been raising this flag since before he became NDP leader. Since he could have edged away from it long ago, and hasn’t, it appears to be a core belief. If true, that is unfortunate for him. Because the theory makes little sense and can only hurt him electorally, except perhaps in Quebec, where he’s already strong.

Though it’s obviously true that the loonie has risen in tandem with the fortunes of the resource sector, to imagine that Ottawa could or should “fix” this by increasing the tax or regulatory burden on Alberta resource companies is ludicrous. Setting aside the disastrous regional rift that would ensue: A slightly weaker loonie, logically, cannot restore heavy manufacturing jobs lost to China or India in pursuit of lower-cost labour. And a greatly weaker loonie would bring problems of its own, among them the much higher cost of goods and services everywhere beyond our borders.

Moreover, as I have said before, the oil patch is symbolic of Canada’s economic hopes, and not just in Alberta. An Abacus survey out this week found that 88 per cent of Ontarians have either a “very favourable” (20 per cent), “somewhat favourable” (33 per cent) or neutral (35 per cent) impression of Alberta. A tiny minority had either a “somewhat unfavourable” (9 per cent) or “very unfavourable” (4 per cent) view. Any attempt to pit Ontarians against Albertans, using the relative economic fortunes of the two provinces as a lever, runs against that sentiment. It won’t succeed.

Mulcair has had a good run. But that very success begs the question of what he might have achieved, or could achieve, with an approach to resource development that doesn’t defy common sense.

Twitter.com/mdentandt

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/resource-debate-will-dog-tom-mulcair-in-2013/feed0Tom Mulcair during Question periodmikedentandtCanadians want Stephen Harper to block foreign investment: pollhttp://o.canada.com/news/national/canadians-want-stephen-harper-to-block-foreign-investment-poll
http://o.canada.com/news/national/canadians-want-stephen-harper-to-block-foreign-investment-poll#commentsTue, 18 Dec 2012 22:30:26 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=170680]]>OTTAWA — Most Canadians want the Harper government to stop the sale of Canadian companies to foreign investors, particularly if the buyer is a state-owned enterprise, a new poll has found.

The Ipsos Reid survey, conducted exclusively for Postmedia News and Global TV, found that 68 per cent of Canadians believe the Conservative government should block the sale of Canadian firms to “all foreign investors.”

Moreover, 74 per cent of Canadians say the governing Tories should stop such proposed acquisitions if they are made by state-owned enterprises owned by a foreign government.

The poll also cast a fresh light on public attitudes towards Canada’s international trade agenda. Most Canadians (61 per cent) support the idea of increasing trade with Asia — a key element of the federal government’s economic plan.

However, there is a note of caution among Canadians about doing business with China. Prime Minister Stephen Harper travelled to that country earlier this year and there has been preliminary discussion about launching talks for a free-trade deal.

But a majority of Canadians (59 per cent) say they oppose a free-trade agreement with China that would be similar to the one struck with the United States 25 years ago.

The nationwide survey comes after Harper announced earlier this month his government will allow the $15.1-billion takeover of Nexen by a Chinese state-owned enterprise, but that future sales of this type in the Canadian oil patch will only occur under “exceptional” circumstances.

Harper also revealed the Tories had approved a $6-billion bid from Malaysian national energy company Petronas for a Calgary-based natural gas producer, Progress Energy Resources.

Under the new plan, the government will only approve such transactions for the oil sands on an “exceptional basis,” and proposed that takeovers by state-owned enterprises, known as SOEs, for all industries will be judged using strict criteria.

The new Ipsos Reid poll confirms that Harper is in sync with Canadians’ sentiment on the issue.

“The government’s position is very much informed by an understanding of public opinion.” Ipsos Reid president Darrell Bricker said Tuesday.

“It was like, ‘We’re holding our nose. We’re doing this because we feel we need to do something when it comes to this type of trade. But very reluctantly.’ ”

When he announced the government’s policy on foreign investment on Dec. 7, Harper took pains to stress that the Tories’ approval of the Nexen and Progress sales was “not the beginning of a trend, but rather the end of a trend.”

“The larger purposes of state-owned enterprises may go well beyond the commercial objectives of privately owned companies,” Harper said, adding that he was concerned the oil industry could be controlled by foreign interests unless his government stepped in.

“To be blunt, Canadians have not spent years reducing the ownership of sectors of the economy by our own governments, only to see them bought and controlled by foreign governments instead.”

For future takeover applications by SOEs, the government will consider the degree of control or influence it will exert on the company and industry and the extent to which a “foreign state” will likely control the company.

Harper dismissed suggestions his policy will scare off foreign investors, stressing that the private sector looks to Canada as a great place in which to invest.

However, Bricker noted that two-thirds of Canadians oppose the sale of Canadian firms to all foreign investors.

“The government is dealing with a fairly hostile environment,” said Bricker. “They haven’t really made a strong case.”

“Harper’s trying to walk that very fine line. And it’s very important for the government to do this because trade is one of the things that they see underpinning their economic message to Canadians. So they really can’t afford to get this one wrong.”

Advocates of outside investment in Canada’s oil industry say the input of foreign capital is needed to pump billions of dollars into projects.

However, the new poll found that most Canadians (56 per cent) disagreed with the statement that “if Canada wants its oil and gas sector to grow, it needs to attract foreign investment from countries like China.”

While the poll found majority support (61 per cent) for enhanced trade to Asia, the support drops for specific countries: India (56 per cent) and China (51 per cent).

The results are from a poll conducted Dec. 7 to 12. For the survey, a sample of 1,021 Canadians from Ipsos’s Canadian online panel was interviewed online.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/canadians-want-stephen-harper-to-block-foreign-investment-poll/feed0Stephen Harpermarkkennedy1Nexen decision further darkens government’s already-murky policyhttp://o.canada.com/news/nexen-decision-further-darkens-governments-already-murky-policy
http://o.canada.com/news/nexen-decision-further-darkens-governments-already-murky-policy#commentsSat, 08 Dec 2012 00:53:55 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=164837]]>So: the right decision this time, but the promise of endless wrong decisions in future.

By accepting CNOOC’s bid for Nexen (and, at the same time, Petronas’s smaller bid for Progress Energy), while all but slamming the door to other foreign state-owned firms with acquisitive ambitions in this country, the prime minister has probably struck the right balance, politically. He has done so, however, at the cost of total incoherence in policy terms.

Certainly he has done nothing to clarify Canada’s famously murky approach to foreign takeovers. Indeed, he has taken a policy that was already restrictive by international standards, and tightened it further. Where before our foreign investment rules were merely opaque, they are now both complex and opaque.

The “net benefit” test, with all of its many overlapping, arbitrary, and subjectively applied criteria, will remain in place for all takeovers, whether by private or state-owned enterprises. In addition, a second battery of tests will now be applied to SOEs: for example, a bid will be accepted or rejected depending on how much “control or influence” the SOE would have over its new subsidiary, and how much control or influence its state owners have over it.

For takeovers by SOEs in the oilsands, yet a third test would apply. That is, they would be prohibited, except in “exceptional circumstances.” The meaning of this is obvious: it would apply in circumstances that are exceptional.

So our policy towards takeovers will now be based on a series of distinctions: between foreign and domestic firms, as before, but also between private and state-owned firms, between the oilsands and other sectors — and of course, between CNOOC/Petronas and every other SOE. As the prime minister explained, the current amount of state ownership in the oil patch, as of 5:15 pm Eastern Standard Time, is just right. But anything more would be too much.

What is the basis for these multiple distinctions? It has always been a puzzle why Canadians who own shares and want to sell them should be prevented from selling them to the highest bidder, but rather must deliver them at a discount to that small coterie of overstuffed domestic acquisitors who already bestride the Canadian economy.

Is it as unreasonable to distinguish between private firms and SOEs? Not altogether: state ownership, particularly where the state is, shall we say, as problematic as China, does raise legitimate issues. We’d want to make sure we understood their ownership structure, for instance, and that we could enforce our laws upon them.

But the case for blocking takeovers by SOEs, solely because they are state-owned, remains as vague and unsupported after the prime minister’s news conference as before. Yes, it is true that they “play by different rules,” that they “have different incentives,” or have access to “different resources” than private firms. Yes, yes, yes. So what?

What precise harm they could do to us with these “different resources” is never explained. There’s no doubt that they can overpay us for things, as CNOOC may well have done for Nexen. If so, we should shut up and take their money before they have time to reconsider. They might even sell us stuff for less than they should. Again, why would we want to stop them?

What the critics are really saying is that state-owned enterprises sometimes do dumb things, owing to their tendency to pursue political rather than commercial objectives. That is indeed why, as the prime minister noted, state ownership has rather fallen out of favour in this country.

But in this case, the dumb state-owned enterprises are somebody else’s problem. The costs of their mistakes fall on foreign taxpayers, not ours, while the benefits accrue to us. Why self avowed free marketers, amongst whom the prime minister once counted himself, should fail to understand this is yet another puzzle.

I can’t say they look terribly comfortable: demanding more government control in the name of protecting the free market. But it’s no more of a contradiction than a government that keeps proclaiming its openness to foreign investment even as it is tightening the screws on it.

The distinction between the oilsands and other sectors seems to rest on nothing more than our old friend, Strategic Resource Theory. Though the oil is in the ground, though it is owned, taxed and regulated by the government, it is somehow of overriding national interest that the right to extract that oil — and to pay those royalties and taxes — be restricted to Canadian shareholders.

That is, it should be denied to foreign shareholders. Or rather foreign state shareholders. Unless they are from China (or Malaysia), in which case they will be allowed. Or rather, they will not be allowed, from now on. Except in “exceptional circumstances.” As long as they are of “net benefit…”

At the outset of his remarks, the prime minister said, “this is not the beginning of a trend, but the end of a trend.” Got it. Just one question: What trend?

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/nexen-decision-further-darkens-governments-already-murky-policy/feed0PipelineandrewcoyneFederal government’s deadline for decision on CNOOC-Nexen deal ‘could be extended’http://o.canada.com/news/national/federal-governments-deadline-for-decision-on-cnooc-nexen-deal-could-be-extended
http://o.canada.com/news/national/federal-governments-deadline-for-decision-on-cnooc-nexen-deal-could-be-extended#commentsWed, 05 Dec 2012 22:47:34 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=163279]]>OTTAWA — The clock is ticking on the deadline for a federal decision on CNOOC’s takeover of Nexen and a new set of foreign investment rules, with provinces, corporate Canada and opposition parties demanding a review process that both includes more clarity but presents an attractive business climate.

The Conservative government has already twice extended its review of the transaction and can seek additional time with CNOOC’s permission.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised to announce his government’s updated rules governing foreign investment and takeovers around the same time as its decision on CNOOC’s takeover bid for Nexen. Any delay in announcing a decision on the transaction would likely also delay the release of a new foreign investment framework.

Alberta Intergovernmental Relations Minister Cal Dallas said Wednesday the province hopes the CNOOC deal is approved because the provinces needs substantial foreign investment in the coming years to help develop its petroleum riches, including the cost-intensive oilsands.

However, Alberta is also hoping the federal government will provide greater clarity on its foreign investment review process and how Ottawa decides on whether a takeover is considered of “net benefit” to Canada, he said.

“The clarity is the key to this. We recognize that even in Alberta there’s a certain number of Albertans that are concerned, that have some angst,” Dallas said in an interview on Parliament Hill.

“Clarity will go a long ways to addressing and having a conversation around the issues that are important and real.”

The Alberta government provided Ottawa a list of conditions it wanted attached to any federal approval of the CNOOC-Nexen transaction. Those conditions reportedly included guarantees that at least half of Nexen’s board and management positions would be held by Canadians; for CNOOC to maintain current staffing levels for at least five years; and a commitment to maintain planned capital spending.

The Harper government is also expected to announce a decision shortly on a proposal from Malaysian national energy company Petronas to acquire Calgary-based natural gas producer Progress Energy Resources.

The Conservative government initially blocked the $6-billion takeover in October because the acquisition didn’t meet the “net benefit” test under the Investment Canada Act, although Petronas tweaked its proposal in hopes of receiving federal approval.

With government decisions on the takeovers and foreign investment rules looming, Paradis hinted Wednesday another extension is possible beyond the Dec. 10 deadline.

“This is the deadline. It could be extended, but once again, I won’t speculate,” Paradis told reporters in Ottawa.

“The idea here is I don’t want to send any signals. When the decisions are ready to announce, when they are made, when they are ready to announce, this will be done. But no speculation. Don’t interpret nothing from what I’m saying here.”

The takeover bid has sparked intense debate within the Conservative government about how much foreign investment Canada should allow when it comes to strategic natural resources such as oil and gas.

A number of MPs in the Conservative caucus, including some cabinet ministers, are believed to oppose CNOOC’s takeover of Nexen because they’re worried about letting Chinese state-owned companies acquire such a significant stake in Canada’s resource sector.

It’s expected the government will clarify how it determines whether foreign investment is of “net benefit” to Canada — currently a broadly defined test under the Investment Canada Act.

Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae believes the government should replace the net benefit test with a “national benefit test” that considers sustainable development, enhanced technological and innovative capacity, and an appropriate number of Canadians employed by the company and in management, among other measures.

Additional scrutiny must be applied to state-owned enterprises like CNOOC and Petronas, he said, to ensure they are transparent in their management structure and operations.

“We certainly don’t want to create a situation where there’s no flexibility in the application of the rules,” Rae said.

“We think there needs to be much greater clarity for Canada about the kinds of questions we will be asking and the sorts of requirements that we will have.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/federal-governments-deadline-for-decision-on-cnooc-nexen-deal-could-be-extended/feed0Christian ParadisjasonfeketeLiberal leadership hopefuls Trudeau, Garneau confront generation gaphttp://o.canada.com/news/national/liberal-leadership-hopefuls-trudeau-garneau-confront-generation-gap
http://o.canada.com/news/national/liberal-leadership-hopefuls-trudeau-garneau-confront-generation-gap#commentsSun, 02 Dec 2012 22:44:03 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=161227]]>OTTAWA — Two Liberal leadership hopefuls with 23 years separating them butted heads about their ages on Sunday, with the elder saying his age doesn’t matter and the younger saying it’s time for a generational change in the party’s leadership.

MP and former astronaut Marc Garneau, who is 63 years old, dismissed concerns that he’s too old to lead the party, telling CTV’s Question Period that his age is a “sham issue.”

“I have a 13 and a 16-year-old at home. I know about the youngest generation. I have an older generation of children – twins who are 36. I’m very connected to Canadians no matter what generation they’re from. A lot of people on my campaign team are very young people. So it’s not an issue,” Garneau said.

He also dismissed concerns that, given the Liberal’s third place standing and the amount of time it could take to build the party up, Garneau could be 70 years old by the time he’s running to be prime minister.

“When we go into the next election, we’ll be doing it for the Liberal party to win. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’re going to be aiming to win in 2015,” Garneau said.

Garneau officially threw his hat in the ring last Wednesday in his Montreal riding of Westmount-Ville-Marie, ending weeks of speculation about whether he would face off with presumed front-runner Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau, who is 40 years old, said in a separate interview aired on Sunday that it is time for generational change in the leadership of the party, adding that he hopes to be able to engage younger voters.

“That’s why I’m running,” Trudeau told CTV’s Question Period. “We’re going to have to draw in a new, young generation of people who’ve been disconnected from politics too long.”

Trudeau, the MP for the Montreal riding of Papineau, has already voiced some strong and not always popular opinions on policy issues. He has publicly supported China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s (CNOOC) $15.1-billion proposed takeover of Calgary-based petroleum producer Nexen.

And during a campaign stop on Friday, he called the long-gun registry “a failure,” according to multiple media reports.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/liberal-leadership-hopefuls-trudeau-garneau-confront-generation-gap/feed0nataliestechysonWith Nexen Trudeau plays against the grain — to good effecthttp://o.canada.com/news/1121-col-dentandt
http://o.canada.com/news/1121-col-dentandt#commentsTue, 20 Nov 2012 20:29:23 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=153766]]>Now he’s gone and done it. How will the legions of Justin Trudeau haters respond, as he begins to put supposedly non-existent meat on the bones of a supposedly brainless, content-free campaign?

In coming out unambiguously in favour of China state-owned CNOOC’s controversial $15.1-billion bid for Calgary-based Nexen Inc., Trudeau has signaled he won’t be pigeon-holed as the vacuous poli-pop star with the Hollywood looks. Among other things, his take on China trade deftly shoves him over to the current Liberal party’s economic right wing. It also shows — not for the first time — that he has the capacity to surprise.

To give credit where credit is due: The overwhelming favourite to win the Liberal crown didn’t need to take this position, which puts him offside of much of the progressive left, as well as public opinion.

It’s easy for an opposition politician to lambaste a government policy. It’s even easier to do so when the government’s effort has been a mish-mash. Whatever the merits of its economic direction — and there are a few — the Harper government has evolved into a terrifically inept communicator. In the midst of inking trade and investment pacts the world over the Conservatives apparently never anticipated that CNOOC-Nexen, or broader trade ties with Communist China, could become controversial. Pressed over the past month by the New Democrats on details of their investment protection pact (FIPA) with China, the Tories responded with the now customary suite of idiotic talking points.

It was no surprise at all, therefore, to see NDP leader Tom Mulcair pick up this ball and run with it, as he continues to do. There are legitimate questions, as I have noted before, about both the detail of the FIPA, and the CONOOC-Nexen deal. The Harper government should have addressed these up front: Instead it has played catch-up. Its likeliest way forward now is to approve the takeover, but with stringent conditions. Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that CONOOC has accepted a requirement that the acquired company have 50 per cent Canadian representation on its board and in management.

If true, that is fascinating: Article 7 of the Canada-China FIPA says that “a contracting party may not require that an enterprise of that Party . . . appoint individuals of any particular nationality to senior management positions.” The agreement allows that a majority of a board of directors be “of a particular nationality or resident of the territory of the Contracting Party,” but only if that does not “materially impair the ability of the investor to exercise control over its investment.”

For CONOOC to accept a 50-50 board and executive-suite split, therefore, would denote appreciable flexibility in the interpretation of the FIPA, to Canada’s benefit — perhaps driven by knowledge on both sides that the deal has become a hot potato.

All of which makes Trudeau’s position the more noteworthy: Understanding that the Nexen deal will likely be approved, and knowing that Main Street sentiment is running against, he could have aped Mulcair with an un-nuanced slam. That’s the old peril and temptation of Liberalism: You can say whatever you need to based on circumstance, because no one expects you to have any principles beyond the quest for power.

Instead Trudeau chose to make a case that is, from a populist point of view, a tougher sell. And he did so in unusually blunt terms. “China, for one, sets its own rules and will continue to do so because it can. China has a game plan. There is nothing inherently sinister about that. They have needs and the world has resources to meet those needs. We Canadians have more of those resources — and therefore more leverage — than any nation on earth.”

In effect Trudeau began to make the case the Harper government could have made all along — but hasn’t. It seems he isn’t especially interested in vying with Mulcair for the leftovers of the centre-left. He’s after the full meal and his target is Harper.

The next line of attack for Trudeau’s detractors, as more policy emerges, will be that he isn’t personally producing it: He’s cribbing it from the policy brains on his team. At some point, perhaps belatedly, it will dawn that someone has to gather and lead the team, and that this is, in fact, what leaders do.

Beyond that, the strategy and timing are of a piece in themselves. With this move, Trudeau outflanked new challenger Martha Hall Findlay — who is pro-trade, favours the Nexen deal and is an articulate economic conservative. He set himself up, perhaps for the first time, as someone who can walk and chew gum at the same time. He played against the stereotypes that are his greatest point of vulnerability. And he offered the clearest signal yet that, should he win next April, the Liberal platform in 2015 will not be the usual pastiche of Chretien-era retreads.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/1121-col-dentandt/feed0Liberal Party leadership candidate Justin Trudeau speaks to supporters at a rally in MississaugamikedentandtReaction to Justin Trudeau’s support of the CNOOC-Nexen dealhttp://o.canada.com/business/reaction-to-justin-trudeaus-support-of-the-cnooc-nexen-deal
http://o.canada.com/business/reaction-to-justin-trudeaus-support-of-the-cnooc-nexen-deal#commentsTue, 20 Nov 2012 15:45:42 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=153506]]>…

As soon as Justin Trudeau published his opinion in support of the CNOOC-Nexen deal, opinions came roaring in from across Canada. Some people found themselves surprised to agree with the MP and Liberal leadership candidate. Others found themselves disillusioned with the man they thought agreed with them on most national matters. What was surprising to our team, though, was how evenly divided reaction was: Almost half of responses were in support of the piece, while the other half solidly loathed it.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments!

As soon as Justin Trudeau published his opinion piece in newspapers across Canada, in which he promoted the idea that the CNOOC-Nexen deal is good for Canada, reaction started to flow in almost instantly. What’s best, is the pros and cons were divided almost equally.

]]>http://o.canada.com/business/reaction-to-justin-trudeaus-support-of-the-cnooc-nexen-deal/feed0Liberal leadership candidate Justin Trudeau.thecanadadotcomChina is not just another trading partnerhttp://o.canada.com/news/1116-col-dentandt
http://o.canada.com/news/1116-col-dentandt#commentsThu, 15 Nov 2012 22:01:41 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=151237]]>The economic cognoscenti in this country – the ecognoscenti? – including senior figures in both the Liberal and Conservative parties and virtually all my columnist colleagues, believe Canada’s freshly minted foreign investment protection agreement with China (FIPA) is a no-brainer. Opposition to the FIPA, we are led to believe, is populist twaddle.

Likewise the related $15.1-billion bid by China’s state-owned oil company CNOOC Ltd. for Calgary-based Nexen Inc. is a slam dunk, or it should be. Nexen isn’t a major player; many of its assets are overseas. The booty is rich – $27.50 share, a 60-per-cent premium over the pre-bid price. It’s not as though incoming Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping – who, by the way, gave a peppy little speech at his formal unveiling in Beijing Thursday – will be camping out on the new Alberta cottage’s front lawn. This man has better things to do, such as managing the tiny, insular oligarchy that rules a fifth of the people on Earth.

Canada, everyone with sense knows, must get in on the China gold rush while there’s still time. The United States is mired in $16-trillion in public debt; Europe is, as of Thursday, in recession for the second time in four years. Canada’s natural resources – 600 projects worth $650 billion ready to go – are the single ray of light. China will become the world’s largest economy by 2020. And because much of its territory is still relatively undeveloped, the raw-material need curve is just beginning.

All true. Now, however, I must interrupt this column with a nagging, impolitic passage from the U.S. Department of State’s human rights report on China, for 2011.

“As in previous years, citizens did not have the right to change their government. Other human rights problems during the year included: extrajudicial killings, including executions without due process; enforced disappearance and incommunicado detention, including prolonged illegal detentions at unofficial holding facilities known as ‘black jails’; torture and coerced confessions of prisoners; detention and harassment of lawyers, journalists, writers, dissidents, petitioners, and others who sought to peacefully exercise their rights under the law; a lack of due process in judicial proceedings; political control of courts and judges; closed trials…”

There’s more – much more. Well, yes, sigh our world-weary ecognoscenti, there are a few glitches over there. But how will the People’s Republic ever modernize if we don’t deepen mutual ties? China’s despotic, opaque institutions themselves are the best argument in favour of the FIPA, its proponents insist. “The main purpose of a FIPA,” declares a federal government backgrounder, “is to ensure greater protection to foreign investors against discriminatory and wholly arbitrary practices… ”

Japan, it may surprise some to learn, has a FIPA with China. It was signed in 1989. Among other things, the agreement commits each party to protect the business interests and properties of the other. China is Japan’s largest trading partner and has been since 2007. In 2011, total two-way trade between the two Asian giants was worth $344.9-billion US – a new high.

Just weeks ago, amid a territorial dispute over miniscule, uninhabited islands in the East China Sea between Okinawa and Taiwan, there were mass protests in 50 eastern Chinese cities. Violent mobs trashed or burned Japanese-owned supermarkets, factories and car dealerships, while police stood by. The damage has since been estimated by the Japanese government at more than $100-million US. Japan’s FIPA with China, as you may have guessed, was of little use during the riots, or in their aftermath. Japanese businesses have been left to fend for themselves, seeking compensation in Chinese courts.

Incidentally, Japan has held the disputed islands since 1895. They are considered by the United States to be a part of Japanese territory and are explicitly covered under The United States’ Mutual Co-operation and Security Pact with Japan, signed in 1960.

At a little-reported forum in Ottawa last month North American security experts were asked to comment on how Chinese state-owned enterprises are different from, say, Canadian corporations. Ray Boisvert, formerly deputy director of Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, summed up the consensus view, as I have written before: They operate as organs of the communist party. This, of course, is why the Nexen deal has become such a hot potato: CONOOC is not just a company. It’s an arm of the Beijing ruling clique. Rejection of the bid therefore means rejection of the clique. Because the clique utterly controls the country, that in turn will be taken to mean a rejection of China itself.

Is this not, to use the precise economic jargon, seriously messed up? The Conservative government blundered into this on the assumption that dealing with China is just like dealing with any other trading nation. It isn’t. In attempting to rush the FIPA through with no discussion or study, let alone a credible plan of engagement, the government guaranteed it would become controversial. It now finds itself in a Catch-22. Extrication will not be easy.

Twitter.com/mdentandt

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/1116-col-dentandt/feed2Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper Visits ChinamikedentandtOttawa urged to make timely decision, clarify criteria as CNOOC-Nexen deal review extendedhttp://o.canada.com/business/1012-nexen-extension
http://o.canada.com/business/1012-nexen-extension#commentsThu, 11 Oct 2012 13:50:14 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=126034]]>OTTAWA — As the Conservative government prolongs its review of the CNOOC-Nexen transaction, some Canadian business leaders are urging Ottawa to make a timely decision on the takeover and clarify its review criteria to avoid future deals from turning into another political football.

The Harper government said Thursday it has extended its review of the CNOOC-Nexen deal by 30 days, until mid-November, although it indicated even more time than that may be needed before a final decision is announced.

The cabinet has been reviewing whether to approve China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s $15.1-billion takeover bid of Calgary-based energy producer Nexen Inc. under the Investment Canada Act, and whether the deal is of “net benefit” to Canada.

The government’s original 45-day review period was set to expire Friday, so the announcement Thursday gives it another month to make a decision, although an additional extension beyond November is also possible.

Perrin Beatty, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said Thursday his group hopes the government announces its decision on the transaction before the end of the new 30-day extension and that it doesn’t seek additional time beyond that.

The longer the process continues, the more investors and Nexen shareholders are “left hanging,” wondering what will happen with the company, he said. It also raises broader questions about how Canada reviews foreign investment.

“The government really needs to clear this up as rapidly as possible. I think we’re all looking for clarity in terms of how it’s going to interpret the guidelines in the future, what issues are at stake,” Beatty said in an interview with Postmedia News. “What we have today is very opaque.”

It’s unfortunate the government didn’t clarify the review process before it examined the takeover bid for Nexen, he said, which leaves “considerable uncertainty” over how Ottawa will define “net benefit” and how to deal with state-owned enterprises like Beijing-based CNOOC.

“The concern here is that we’re dealing with a black box. The guidelines that exist today are so vague that it’s impossible for potential investors to know where they stand,” added Beatty, a former federal Conservative cabinet minister from the Mulroney era.

“We can’t be capricious. The rule of law has to apply, and for the rule of law to apply you have to have greater clarity than we have today.”

The government’s review — and the ramifications of its decision on future foreign investment and takeovers, especially in the oilsands sector — is proving to be a divisive issue within the Tory cabinet and caucus.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said last week that CNOOC’s takeover bid “raises a range of difficult policy questions” for his government as it decides whether to approve the transaction.

Harper has promised the government will release a road map governing foreign takeovers around the same time it announces its decision on the CNOOC-Nexen deal.

Beatty said the continued uncertainty over investment reviews is also a thorn in the government’s side because each case — much like the CNOOC-Nexen transaction — becomes politicized rather than simply being based on clear principles.

“We’ve had a debate that has heated up on the floor of the House of Commons, and as a consequence, it is being turned into a political issue,” he added.

The government’s review of the Nexen file, with the consent of the investor, may be extended beyond the additional 30 days and past mid-November, although a decision can be made at any time.

“Extensions to the review period are not unusual,” Industry Minister Christian Paradis said Thursday in a statement. “The required time will be taken to conduct a thorough and careful review of this proposed investment.”

In reviewing whether foreign investments and takeovers like the CNOOC-Nexen deal are of “net benefit” to Canada, the government will examine a number of factors, including the effect of the transaction on investment, economic activity and employment in Canada, as well as the country’s ability to compete in world markets.

Furthermore, takeovers by state-owned enterprises such as CNOOC will see the government also examine whether the company adheres to Canadian standards of corporate governance, as well as how and the extent to which the foreign firm is owned or controlled by a state.

Paul Boothe, a former director of investments at Industry Canada who worked on previous foreign investment reviews, said the 30-day extension is necessary because of the complexity of deals like the CNOOC-Nexen transaction.

The Conservative government is likely examining the business plans CNOOC has submitted with its application, he said, and then federal officials will compare it to the best estimate of what Nexen would have been doing in absence of the transaction.

The federal government may also check in with the Competition Bureau to see whether any competitive issues are raised with the transaction, said Boothe, a professor at the Lawrence National Centre for Policy and Management at Western University in London, Ont.

Ottawa will, at some point, likely have CNOOC translate its plans into firm commitments of what the company would do if the transaction is approved, be it on staffing levels, production and other issues, he said.

The government will also be considering possible precedents that the transaction could set for future deals and be looking to address concerns over reciprocity, he noted, but it’s important the decision-making process follows the rules already in place.

“One of the things you don’t want to do is change the rules in the middle of a transaction,” Boothe said.

]]>http://o.canada.com/business/1012-nexen-extension/feed1jasonfeketeCNOOC’s takeover bid of Nexen: politicians meddle because they canhttp://o.canada.com/business/no-economic-logic-compels-politicians-to-discriminate-between-foreign-and-domestic-takeovers
http://o.canada.com/business/no-economic-logic-compels-politicians-to-discriminate-between-foreign-and-domestic-takeovers#commentsMon, 01 Oct 2012 22:55:18 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=120141]]>As a general rule, there is no particular reason to treat a foreign takeover any differently than a domestic one. When Acme Ballbearings of Guelph, Ont., makes a bid for Ballbearings R Us of Brandon, Man., no government agency is assigned to ponder whether the transaction is of “net benefit” to Canada.

It is sufficient, rather, that it is of net benefit to both parties, as it must be if the exchange is to take place. The seller thinks the shares are worth less than the purchase price; the buyer thinks they are worth more. It is quite possible for both to be right.

It is not considered necessary also to calculate the losses to Ballbearings R Us’s suppliers, and to their suppliers, and so on, should Acme decide to buy its parts elsewhere: in an economy based on voluntary exchange, we are not given a veto over other people’s business decisions, or the right to force them to do business with us. (The exceptions are takeovers that put the buyer in a position of monopolistic power — for then they could force others to do business with them.)

Only when the buyer comes from outside our borders does the state feel entitled to step in between buyer and seller, on behalf of a variety of interests with little in common save that none of them are parties to the transaction. Thus is the buyer obliged to employ this number of workers, to buy from this supplier and so on, all in the name of ensuring the transaction is of “net benefit,” not to the buyer or the seller, but to “Canada” — a test whose precise requirements are never revealed to him, and which at the end of the process he may be told he could not have passed anyway, no matter what undertakings he might have made.

And so far as this costs the buyer, it also costs the seller, who is deprived of the full price of his shares. This uncompensated expropriation of a part of his assets, he will be glad to learn, is all in the name of preserving Canadian “ownership.”

The process, in short, is entirely arbitrary. No economic logic compels politicians to discriminate between foreign and domestic takeovers. They do it for the same reason people in politics do most things: because they can. The sooner we take that power away from them — for example, by reversing the onus, converting the “net benefit” rule to one of “net harm” — the better.

As I say, that’s the general rule. Is China National Offshore Oil Company’s proposed takeover of Nexen an exception? A lot of people seem to think so: because it involves oil, because CNOOC is state-owned, because China does not grant the same rights to Canadian investors, because, well, it’s China. Even people who might ordinarily look askance at foreign-ownership controls are prepared to justify them in this case. Are they right?

The least important factor is the first. There is no intrinsic significance to oil, whatever impressive-sounding labels (“strategic resource”) might be slapped on it. In any event, what CNOOC is buying is not the oil, but the right to extract it. Until it does, the oil remains under the ground and under Crown ownership. To drill, CNOOC must pay royalties to the province, as it must pay taxes on its profits, the same as any other company. And, like any other company, it must obey Canadian laws, at least so far as its Canadian operations are concerned.

Yes, oil is fetching a high price these days: the list of companies that might be next in line after Nexen as the target of a foreign buyer is a long one. But in every case, the meat of the argument is the same: if their Canadian owners did not feel the price was at least equal to the discounted stream of earnings they could expect on their shares — or if they did not think they could earn a greater return by reinvesting the proceeds elsewhere — they would not sell.

That CNOOC is state-owned sounds like a significant objection, until you try to work out why. State ownership is often associated with inefficiency and politicization — but if so that’s a problem for China’s taxpayers, not ours. It’s entirely possible, for example, that CNOOC is overpaying for Nexen — a premium of 60% over the market price — with the help of its state backers. How is it not in the national interest to relieve them of their money?

At which point, some critics flip the state ownership argument on its head. It must be part of some cunning plan, some broader economic or geopolitical objective. But again: what, precisely? Even China can’t corner the world oil market. Or if the game is to subsidize the price of oil to Chinese manufacturers, there are easier and cheaper ways of doing it than buying an oil company. Why not just buy the oil?

What about reciprocity? Should we forbid Canadian shareholders from selling to Chinese investors, so long as China applies the same restrictions at home? If there were some prospect of forcing a deal to open up both, there might be some point to it. But there’s no reason to do so out of sheer pique. We benefit from foreign investment, whether or not foreigners reciprocate.

I doubt we’d be hearing so much about state ownership if it was Norway’s Statoil that was buying Nexen. Which is fair enough, up to a point: it’s legitimate, given China’s track record, to want to be sure that our laws would indeed be obeyed, notably with respect to environmental and labour standards, and to insist that our regulators have the access they need to enforce them. I see no reason to think that is impossible.

Still, if that’s where we’re drawing the line now — no longer opposed to foreign takeovers as such, but only to those emanating from repressive regimes — that’s progress in itself. The prime minister has promised a broader redrafting of foreign investment rules in the wake of the Nexen decision. If rejecting or modifying CNOOC’s bid provided cover for a general opening of our borders, that would be a pretty good trade.

]]>http://o.canada.com/business/no-economic-logic-compels-politicians-to-discriminate-between-foreign-and-domestic-takeovers/feed0Kevin ReinhartandrewcoyneNational security a priority in foreign acquisitions, government sayshttp://o.canada.com/news/national/0922-investment-security
http://o.canada.com/news/national/0922-investment-security#commentsFri, 21 Sep 2012 19:43:48 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=114608]]>OTTAWA — The Harper government sought to re-assure Canadians Friday that national security will be a priority as it reviews a state-owned Chinese oil giant’s proposed takeover of Calgary-based energy company Nexen.

“The Investment Canada Act contains provisions to protect national security,” Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said in the House of Commons, “and the people of Canada can be sure that our government has done its job and makes good decisions in the interest of Canada.”

The comments come a day after Canada’s spy agency warned that some state-owned foreign companies are pursuing “opaque agendas” in Canada as they attempt to acquire control over strategic sectors of the Canadian economy.

That coincided with Nexen shareholders overwhelmingly approving Thursday the $15.1-billion US foreign takeover of the company by the giant state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

The proposed takeover now rests in the hands of the Conservative government, which has been conflicted over its desire to attract more investment from foreign countries and strategic concerns over China controlling interest in a major oilsands project.

Under the Investment Canada Act, the government’s review will consider a number of factors, including whether CNOOC, as for all state-owned enterprises, adheres to Canadian standards of corporate governance as well as how and the extent to which the non-Canadian company is owned or controlled by a state.

Opposition parties have been demanding greater transparency as the Harper government reviews the proposed deal behind closed doors, and they reiterated opening the deal to public scrutiny is all the more important given the potential security implications.

“Whenever you have a transaction that involves a state-owned company that’s owned by a country that’s not a democracy, there might be security risks and security issues,” said Liberal industry critic Geoff Regan.

“And that’s why it’s all the more important for the government to disclose what’s in this deal. Canadians I think have a right to see what’s really been put on the table here so they can examine these questions.”

Only two proposed foreign takeovers have been rejected since the Investment Canada Act was introduced in 1985 — both by the Conservative government amid heavy political pressure.

The first involved the proposed takeover of satellite producer MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) in 2008, and the second involved Australian giant BHP Billiton Ltd.’s attempt to buy Saskatchewan’s Potash Corp. in 2010.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper had promised changes to the Investment Canada Act to make the review process and criteria more transparent, and the government has changed things so it can explain why a proposed takeover is rejected.

But NDP House leader Nathan Cullen accused the government of not doing enough.

“It just seems to be this make-it-up-as-you-go-along policy when it comes to foreign investment.”

The Harper government has been openly working to court foreign investment into Canada and expand energy exports to Asia.

But the takeover bid has sparked heated debate, including within the Conservative cabinet and caucus, about how much foreign investment Canada should allow when it comes to strategic natural resources such as oil and gas.

International Trade Minister Ed Fast told reporters Friday that while the Harper government is trying to make Canada attractive to foreign investment, “we’re also looking for a level playing field.”

“We look for a balancing of opportunities as we engage with our key trade partners around the world,” he said.

Fast refused to talk about the proposed takeover, but said national security considerations are a key part of all the government’s economic dealings with foreign countries.

“When we negotiate trade agreements around the world, and investment agreements and other economic types of framework agreements, we always take the security of Canada into account,” he said.

“In fact, it would be our top priority to make sure Canada remains safe, secure.”

Kevin Reinhart, Nexen’s interim president and chief executive, said Thursday the takeover of the company isn’t the end for the company as CNOOC intends on keeping the Calgary headquarters and all of the company’s employees.

“This transaction will in no way close the book on Nexen or our way of doing business,” Reinhart told shareholders, adding that the Chinese intend on maintaining the Nexen brand.

“Instead it will open up a new chapter in our proud history, one I believe has the potential to be as exciting as all the past ones.”

However, the $15.1-billion takeover still requires approval by the Canadian government under the Investment Canada Act.

The deal faces the key “net benefit” test that tripped up BHP-Billiton’s hostile takeover bid for Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan.

Concerns have been raised by Alberta Tory MP Ted Menzies who has said he’s been getting a lot of negative feedback from constituents about the takeover by a state-owned Chinese firm.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has also said that China needs to show its state-run enterprises can be trusted to play by the same rules as Canada.

CNOOC has offered $27.50 per share in cash for Nexen, which has offshore oil and gas assets around the world as well as a stake in the Long Lake oil sands project in Alberta and shale gas operations in B.C.

Nexen shares were up eight cents at $24.75 in trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange, suggesting that at least some investors believe there is a chance Ottawa will reject the deal.

The deal had required a approval by two-thirds of the votes case by both Nexen’s common and preferred shareholders. The common shareholders voted 99 per cent in favour of the deal, while the preferred shareholders voted 87 per cent to approve the agreement.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/nexen-shareholders-vote-to-approve-15-1-billion-takeover-offer-from-cnooc/feed0thecanadianpressNexen: Canada’s industry minister waiting for official proposal from Chinese company on takeoverhttp://o.canada.com/news/nexen-canadas-industry-minister-waiting-for-official-proposal-from-chinese-company-on-takeover
http://o.canada.com/news/nexen-canadas-industry-minister-waiting-for-official-proposal-from-chinese-company-on-takeover#commentsWed, 22 Aug 2012 19:07:37 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=97728]]>CALGARY — Canada’s industry minister says there is no deadline for his decision to approve or reject a Chinese state-owned company’s multibillion-dollar bid for Calgary-based Nexen Inc.

China National Offshore Oil Company made a US$15.1-billion all-cash offer last month for oil and gas producer Nexen (TSX:NXY). It was a friendly bid, offering shareholders a 60-per-cent premium on their holdings.

The proposed deal promises to maintain Nexen’s Calgary base and keep all of its current employees and management.

Nexen has faced numerous challenges over the past few years, including the troubled launch of its Long Lake oilsands project in northern Alberta and recent second-quarter profits that fell nearly 57 per cent thanks to a failed well in the Gulf of Mexico.

The deal faces a review by both Industry Minister Christian Paradis and the federal Competition Bureau.

Paradis said his department is still waiting for a formal proposal from the Chinese company before a review can begin.

“I was told that CNOOC was going to table a proposal soon so that is the state of the matter. After that this will be a reviewable transaction,” Paradis told reporters in Calgary.

“I cannot speculate about deadlines. I was told there was going to be a proposal tabled soon so let’s see what happens in the future.”

Paradis said once the official proposal is received by his department the offer will be scrutinized to make sure there is a “net benefit” for Canada.

“That’s the bottom line here. Let’s not prejudge any investment. There’s a review to be done and according to the law we have to make sure there’s a net benefit,” Paradis said.

“We showed guidelines in 2009 for state-owned enterprises — this is public, this is transparent so they know exactly how we apply the law.”

The Chinese company has made several other investments in Canadian companies over the past seven years, including buying stakes in MEG Energy Inc. and a 60-per cent investment in Northern Cross (Yukon) Ltd.

If the bid by China National Offshore Oil Co. is successful, it would be China’s largest-ever overseas acquisition.

Harper’s Conservative government has rejected only two foreign takeovers in its six years in office, the most notable being the failed bid by Anglo-Australian mining firm BHP Billiton for Potash Corp. (TSX:POT) in 2010.

In 2008, the Tories blocked the $1.3-billion sale of Vancouver-based MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates’ space-technology division to an American company.

The offer has attracted attention south of the border.

A U.S. senator wants his government to hold up the takeover as a means to press China on its trade policy.

Charles Schumer made his argument in a letter sent to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who chairs the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a body that reviews foreign investments in U.S. companies.

The New York Democrat wrote that he “sincerely” hopes the friendly deal between CNOOC and Nexen goes through and that Chinese companies continue to invest in the United States.

“I urge you not to miss this opportunity — the largest foreign acquisition ever by a Chinese company — to hold China to the commitments it has made to provide a level playing field for U.S. companies seeking to access Chinese markets.”

Although Nexen (TSX:NXY) is based in Canada, it has offshore holdings in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and CNOOC said the deal requires approval from regulators in the U.S.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/nexen-canadas-industry-minister-waiting-for-official-proposal-from-chinese-company-on-takeover/feed0thecanadianpressChristy Clark, Northern Gateway and the old ‘net benefit’ extortion rackethttp://o.canada.com/news/coyne-christy-clark-northern-gateway-and-the-old-net-benefit-extortion-racket
http://o.canada.com/news/coyne-christy-clark-northern-gateway-and-the-old-net-benefit-extortion-racket#commentsWed, 25 Jul 2012 23:45:09 +0000http://postmediacanadadotcom.wordpress.com/?p=82061]]>As the Nexen sale is to Stephen Harper, so the Northern Gateway pipeline is to Christy Clark. Both proposals come with substantial economic benefits, but also political dangers. Each leader will thus be tempted to attach a pricey list of conditions to their approval, in order to limit their exposure. So far, at least one of them has succumbed to that temptation.

Legally speaking, Gateway does not need the premier of British Columbia’s approval to proceed. Pipelines are federal jurisdiction: the National Energy Board, after it has completed its hearings, will be the one to say yea or nay, albeit subject to cabinet override. It may be that the government of B.C. can prevent it from going ahead in other ways, though whether these could withstand a really determined federal government is another question.

Clark’s real weapon is political: the opposition of much of the B.C. public to the project, and the price the federal Tories likely would pay at the polls were they seen to be overriding the government of B.C. on the matter — her own, or that of her likely NDP successor. The list of demands she has suddenly produced, far behind in the polls with less than a year to go before the provincial election, is an obvious attempt to inoculate herself on the Gateway issue, without actually coming out against it.

That, at any rate, is the charitable interpretation. The demand, in particular, that the government of B.C. be paid an unspecified sum as its “fair share” of the fiscal and economic benefits flowing from the project is so outrageous that it is difficult to believe it was not done for show. Fairness suggests entitlement. But it’s not immediately evident why the B.C. government should be entitled to any of the Gateway largesse. It doesn’t own the oil, and is not laying the pipe. The $6.7 billion in additional tax revenues it is currently projected to receive from it is more or less a windfall.

The government’s answer, that it is entitled to its “fair share” on account of the environmental “risk” it is taking on by allowing Alberta’s heavy oil to be piped across its territory and shipped out of its ports, is hardly enlightening. The principle sounds fine. But just as it does not specify how much it is due, so it does not explain precisely what risk it is assuming. If it is the cost of preventing and/or cleaning up from a spill, that is belied by the rest of its position paper, in which it is made quite clear it has no intention of paying for any of this.

For example, it proposes a long list of measures to improve the capacity to respond to spills off BC’s coastline, all of them to be implemented by the federal government, at federal expense. It calls for raising the limit on liability for damages in the event of a spill, to ensure industry sets aside sufficient funds “to fully cover a major response (italics)without requiring public money(italics).” (Emphasis added.) Land-based spill management is likewise to be “industry-funded,” on the principle that “those sectors (i.e. the oil and gas industry) that pose the risk must be responsible for (italics)all related mitigation and response costs(italics).” (Emphasis added, again.)

So whatever risks the pipeline poses, they would not appear to be risks to the financial position of the government of B.C. It is demanding its “fair share” — from whom is likewise something of a mystery — not because it is incurring any additional risk, but because it can: because (it believes) the pipeline cannot proceed without it.

Perhaps there are other costs, not covered by “all related mitigation and response costs.” If so, there are better ways of seeking compensation than issuing vague public ransom notes to neighbouring provinces. For example, it could apply to the NEB to add a surcharge to the toll collected by the pipeline’s owners, Enbridge, some portion of which would then be passed back to the oil industry. Better that an impartial third party should assess these things than leave provinces to unilaterally impose tariffs on each other.

In the final paragraph of my last column, I rashly suggested this was a matter that could be left to the two provinces to work out — better that than a “national energy strategy.” But this isn’t about energy. This is about interprovincial trade. What B.C. is attempting here is a provincial version of the “net benefit” test, that mysterious process invoked whenever the owners of a Canadian firm wish to sell their shares to foreigner. It comes with the same pretence of principle, to dress up what is little more than raw opportunism.

If the Harper government would like to deter B.C. from playing silly games over Gateway, it would do well not to indulge in its own. To be sure, Nexen’s proposed $15 billion sale to the China National Offshore Oil Company raises some legitimate issues — not so much to do with state ownership (I don’t think we’d be too upset if the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, for example, were the purchaser) as with the nature of the state in question.

Whether Nexen would be managed on a sound commercial basis under its new owners, that is, need not concern us greatly (if not, that’s China’s loss, not ours), but transparency should: for example, with regard to transfer pricing. If we’re to tax and regulate such firms successfully, we need to know who and what we’re dealing with. What we don’t need are arbitrary demands to maintain head offices here or preserve jobs there or the other riders governments typically impose, the cost of which is usually borne by the sellers, not the buyers.

So fine, let us have a prudent examination of the relevant issues. But let’s leave out the extortion attempts, shall we?

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/coyne-christy-clark-northern-gateway-and-the-old-net-benefit-extortion-racket/feed0B.C. Premier Clark speaks during news conference after meeting between Premiers and leaders of National Aboriginal Organizations in LunenburgandrewcoyneFederal NDP wants public review, transparent rules for Nexen takeoverhttp://o.canada.com/business/federal-ndp-wants-public-review-transparent-rules-for-nexen-takeover
http://o.canada.com/business/federal-ndp-wants-public-review-transparent-rules-for-nexen-takeover#commentsMon, 23 Jul 2012 18:53:30 +0000http://postmediacanadadotcom.wordpress.com/?p=80342]]>OTTAWA — The federal NDP wants Ottawa to hold a full-fledged public review of the $15-billion takeover of Calgary-based Nexen Inc. by a Chinese state oil producer.

The NDP’s natural resource critic, Peter Julian, says his party will push for hearings through House of Commons committees that deal with industry, natural resources and the environment.

Julian also wants Ottawa to come forward with more transparent rules for approving foreign investment.

He says the Stephen Harper government has been promising improvements for two years, in the wake of its “secretive” rejection of the takeover of Potash Corp. by BHP Billiton.

Julian says a combination of public hearings and more transparent investment review procedures would reveal whether the Nexen deal is truly good for the Canadian economy, the environment and communities.

Industry Minister Christian Paradis says he will assess the Nexen takeover by using a net benefits test that will examine the effects on investment, jobs, productivity, competitiveness and national policies.

His review will take at least 45 days, and can be extended by another 30 days or more.

HONG KONG – China’s top offshore oil producer CNOOC Ltd has agreed to buy Calgary-based Nexen Inc for about $15.1 billion in one of the most ambitious acquisitions by a Chinese company to date that may test Ottawa’s tolerance of foreign takeovers.

State-controlled CNOOC said it would pay $27.50 per common share, representing a 61 percent premium to Nexen’s closing price in New York on Friday.

“The aggregate value of the consideration of the proposed acquisition is approximately $15.1 billion (approximately HK$117.2 billion), and is to be payable in cash,” CNOOC said in a statement filed on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

“The current indebtedness of Nexen of approximately $4.3 billion (approximately HK$33.6 billion) will remain outstanding. The company intends to fund the proposed acquisition through existing cash resources and external financing.”

The statement said the deal would complement CNOOC’s offshore production in China with Nexen assets in many of the world’s most significant producing regions, including Western Canada, the UK’s North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and offshore Nigeria.

The statement said that the Nexen board has unanimously approved of the deal.

CNOOC made its first tentative Canadian investment in 2005, paying C$122 million ($120.76 million) for a 16.7 percent share of the then-private oil sand developer MEG Energy Corp.

It completed a C$2.1 billion acquisition of Opti Canada Ltd in November, giving the Chinese firm its second stake in a Canadian oil sands company.

The deals in Canada haven’t yet awakened the political opposition seen in the United States in 2005 when CNOOC bid $18.5 billion for U.S oil and gas producer Unocal Corp. The backlash killed that deal, upsetting Sino-U.S. relations.

But Canada can review and block any foreign investments worth more than C$312 million, a paltry sum in the global mergers game, if it thinks a deal is not in Canada’s best interests.

It most noticeably exercised that right in 2010 when it blocked Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton’s $39 billion hostile takeover of Potash Corp, the world’s top fertilzer producer.

Yan Shi, UOB Kay Hian oil analyst based in Shanghai, said the price for the deal seemed reasonable.

“Assets in Canada are generally about more than 20 U.S. dollars per barrel. The cost in the deal is less than 20 dollars per barrel,” Shi said.

“CNOOC has been seeking overseas acquisitions, as the domestic reserves are limited. But there has been many limits, things like foreign companies are reluctant to sell, price too high. This deal would be quite successful,” she said.

Chinese companies have been among the most aggressive in targeting assets around the globe to help feed the fast growth of the world’s second biggest economy.